Sirena Diamond is the child of Mexican immigrants who has grown up on the cusp of two cultures. When she isn't consoling her traumatized war veteran brother or entertaining her eccentric abuela with her pet duck, she is caught between a boyfriend trying to erase his past and a man whose past is an ever-changing story and her best friend without boundaries.

Why Stars Burn,a novel-in-stories,introduces us to Sirena's world and the mysteries that lie just below the glittering surface of life in Los Angeles.

Kathleen Alcal is the author ofThe Deepest Roots, a work of speculative nonfiction on sustainability and island living. Her work has received the Governor's Writers Award, the Western States Book Award, and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, among others. A graduate of the MFA Program at the University of New Orleans and the Clarion West Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop, Kathleen is editing an anthology on La Llorona, the Crying Woman of Mexican mythology, with Norma Elias Cant. Her novelsSpirits of the OrdinaryandThe Flower in the Skullhave recently been republished by Raven Chronicles Press.